Welcome to a World in Motion

Vicon is the leading developer of motion capture products and services for the Life Science, Entertainment and Engineering industries. We have revolutionised the motion capture industry for 30 years, consistently pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

Vicon launches Cara – the new face of film and games production

Facial tracking for the most efficient high-performance facial animation on the market

Motion capture technology innovator, Vicon, today announced the launch of Cara, a pioneering facial motion capture system. The latest addition to the Vicon suite of digital motion capture systems is available to order now.

Cara is designed to enable film and games studios of any size to bring characters to life through advanced facial tracking and capture. It offers users improved efficiency and performance for games and film production, and sets the standard for affordable, accessible and high-quality character realism.

The system is available as a standalone product or can be seamlessly integrated as part of a full Vicon motion capture workflow, opening up the performance capture market to a whole new range of potential customers. Its modular design gives users complete flexibility when dealing with the captured data. Users can take up to four high definition images and pass them either through Vicon's CaraPost software to automatically produce 3D points or their processing pipeline of choice to recreate the actor's performance on a computer generated model.

Based on 30 years' motion capture experience, Vicon has developed Cara to be reliable, future proof and to offer unrivalled quality, enabling users to focus on the creative process rather than breaking shoot momentum with failed or aesthetically unacceptable visualisation.

Ben Guthrie, motion capture supervisor, Framestore, said: 'Head mounted cameras are the way forward when it comes to large scale capture stages. Through Beta testing of Cara we've seen at Framestore that Vicon is an innovator in the industry. Cara offers four synchronised high speed cameras with full wireless connectivity, and a robust dot tracking solution that integrates well into Vicon's existing motion capture products as well as being a solid standalone system.'

Vicon is also showcasing its recently launched real-time animation software, Blade 2 at SIGGRAPH. It enables the most effective production pipelines and workflow efficiency for motion capture projects, delivers the best realtime performance on the market and integrates seamlessly with Vicon's T-Series and Bonita camera ranges.

Blade 2's Quick Post feature gives users the option to automate the post processing workflow. Reconstruction, labelling, fixing and solving can all be achieved with one click, reducing the need for intensive manual clean up and back-end editing.

Vicon CEO, Imogen Moorhouse, said: 'The need for a modular, high-performance and accessible facial motion capture and tracking system has long been recognised within the industry. This makes the launch of Cara very exciting and instrumental to the future of facial motion capture. Vicon's long heritage and industry expertise allows us to develop practical innovations to enable our customers to push the boundaries of what is possible. Whether the user is a start-up studio or a long-standing Hollywood giant, high quality facial motion tracking is now accessible to all.'

About Cara

The Vicon Cara system consists of:

1 Pico logger

1 Pico BOB

4 Pico cameras – 720P, 60fps, Global shutter (monochrome)

4 Pico camera-to-BOB cables

1 Pico BOB-to-logger cable

2 batteries and cable

1 battery charger with power lead

Vicon Cara HeadRig

Cara calibration objects

Accessories

Documentation

Transportation and storage Case

The Cara system utilises two pieces of software:

CaraLive

This software has access to all Cara system functions for set up, static calibration, capture, control and recording. Exporting is possible from this software not only to CaraPost but to other external software packages via a variety of formats.

CaraPost

This software contains frame-by-frame calibration, tracking, editing and export functions. The output of CaraPost consists of 3D points representing markers on the face. Exporting from here is to third-party animation packages.

Latest Tweets

RT @VisitDreamscape: Our new home is a (virtual) reality! #Dreamscape is officially open at Westfield Century City. Come and join us on an…